Umesh:
(1) It is not a question of if I know any Hindus who are atheists. The question
is if a Hindu does not believe in God, is he still a Hindu. The answer is YES.
Without going into too much depth, we know that out of the six Hindu schools of
thought, at least two do not believe in God.
(2) Regarding your reference to Christian website, they will write what the
Hindu books write. That does not change the situation. Do you think ALL Hindus
believe in reincarnation because some Christian website tell that that is what
Hindus believe? You are yet to come up with at least one thing which all Hindus
believe.
(Let me help you, you may say ALL Hindus believe in the Vedas or the Gita. And
I would say, you are wrong again.)
The bottom line is the Hindus donot have a common harmonius culture sharing
common beliefs, holidays and celebrations.
Please defend this statement.
(3) Regarding Krishna being originally a Dravidian local cult god, you may find
this reference in books by Radhakrishnan, not to say of others.
Good Day!
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Ram Sarangapani
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 11, 2007 1:16 AM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology- Pan-Hindu
beliefs list
http://contenderministries.org/hinduism/hindubeliefs.php
This Christian website also agrees that Hindus believe in these three things
I talked about. If you want some book to be shown as a reference that should
not be a problem either - but are we talking about Hinduism practiced by 800
million people or some cult which has a couple of hundred followers in some
remote area.
Umesh
umesh sharma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Rajen-da,
Tell me the name of a couple of Hindus who are atheists? We will take up
your other objections later.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; Ram Sarangapani
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 11:57 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology- Pan-Hindu
beliefs list
Rajen-da,
You try to put me in a spot but I think the answer is not tht
elusive-lets see:
1. ALL Hindus believe in God
WRONG-Some Hindus are Atheists (Nastika)
2. All Hindus believe in reincarnation - rebirth
WRONG again. Why do you think ALL Hindus beleive that?
3. All Hindus believe that it is possible to attain Moksha/Nirvana
through meditation/Yoga , prayer etc -- that is meet God in one own's lifetime..
Let me add some more points - which actually are more central to my
comments.
WRONG again. You are trying to generalize may be your own belief to ALL
Hindus.
4. All Hindus that caste system has been part of Hindu society for long
- that means they believe in some system which has a religious head
(Brahmin)-who has a job to assist others in their prayers --so that means that
person should have some qualification. That qualification should be common to
ALL jobs who hold that job across India/Hindu society
Why do you think ALL Hindus belief these whatever you are saying.?
5. ALL Hindus believe that there was a city called Indraprastha
(current Indian capital Delhi) and that Mahabharat war was fought near it -at
Kurukshetra - and its participants were then real persons.
Why do you think ALL Hindus believe all these. Have you tested with any
other Hindus?
If one does not believe in the above (atleast the first three) that
person cannot be
called a Hindu. In social science -exceptions do not change the rule -
it is a mater of a significant number of the group acting or believing in a
certain way. So even if 5% of the Hindus (read the so-called westernised
educated ones) do not believe in any of the above - their views can be
disregarded.
I am sorry, It looks like in your tall standard, most of the 800
millions are not Hindus at all. Ask some Hindu netters to give their views on
these and see.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge
that Indians could have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious
culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations.
I don't want to argue or comment on anybody's belief. But don't you
think the above is correct ie Hindus (forget Indians) don't have a collective
vision? Is not that the problem with present India? The Hindus (forget the
Indians) donot have a common harmonius culture sharing common beliefs, holidays
and celebrations. If you don't want to acknowledge that, then please cite at
least just (3) THREE things which in your opinion ALL Hindus believe. I think
you would have a hard time to answer that and find even this small section of
netters to agree with your view. In fact for the last two hundred years that is
what all scholars, Indian and non Indian, (including Vivekananda, Tegore, Ram
Mohon Roy, Ramakrishna, Aurobindo, Gandhi, Radhakrishnan and others) have been
trying to answer that question without much success. So before we blame the
West, let us at least try to understand where we are. Let us hear from you.
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Ram Sarangapani ; barua25
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 4:27 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Ram-da and Rajen-da,
The point is not whether Jesus or Krishna or Rajen or Umesh or Ram
existed - it is that they are believed to be so - just liked USA is believed to
be the only Super Power in the world. Someone in remote India may have NO
inkling what is Roman empire or that any such country ever existed -- but that
person should or would bow down to the fact that so many educated Indians
believe it does. Why cannot someone in the West understand that most
Indians (read Hindus 800 million of them) believe Krishna and Ram lived on
earth - just Westerners (even athiests ) believe that Abraham lived on earth to
the age of 800 years (as per Bible) and that Jesus was born of Virgin Mary.
Belief of a group can be put on wikipedia etc - why do westerners
oppose even that ? Why belittle it as some minor literary text characters aka
Ian Fleming's (I refer to Ram or Krishna here) -- which has no consequence to
spiritual or religious beliefs of Hindus.
The only logic many vested interests do not want to acknowledge
that Indians cuold have (or have had) a collective vision - a harmonious
culture sharing common beliefs, holidays and celebrations. Isn't it much easier
to paint a picture where every Indian was following his or her own thing
--someone worshipping in the east another in the west. One day one person
celebrating , next day another celebrating something --so the whole city or
region never saw eye to eye ----so NO culture!!
I was surprised to learn that Krishna is the most revered person in
way down India's south Guruvayoor temple --same as in Manipur (far east )
just as in far west at Dwarka and up above in Badrinath, Gangotri etc. But
some westerners would assert that Hindus are a bunch of individualists - who
believe different things - have no religion except caste system (the only
unifying social force or common thought).
SCIENCE:
So when a nation/civilization has no common social system except
caste system (as per above logic) then how can it have intellectuals sitting
together to do scientific work and promoting and rejecting hypothesis and
building consensus.
Umesh
Ram Sarangapani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Barua,
Just couldn't resist not butting in.
Without going into the existence of Krishna, Shiva or Jesus
:)here is a site about Ancient Math in India. Also let us not forget Aryabhatta
(Math) and Kautilya(Politics & Governance).
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html
(BTW: the site is from a UK University and NOT something conjured
up in India:)
--Ram
On 8/10/07, barua25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
When I say FACTS AND FIGURES, I was talking not about our
religious heroes, but about Science and Mathametics.
Say for instance, what India did in case of Mathematics and
when?
Can you produce any written evidence that India invented the
Zero and when? It is difficult.
I donot like to deal with mythical figures like Shiva, Krishna
etc. I consider these Indian gods to be purely mythical figures transformed
from some original tribal religious cults. In my opinion, Shiva was orginally a
local god in the Harappa civilization and Krishna was a Dravidian local tribal
god. This much history tells. Do you have any other evidence to counter that ,
not who believes what?
Rajen da
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: Rajen & Ajanta Barua ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;
[email protected]
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2007 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Rajen-da,
Good to get your response. Now about facts - would you not
agree that most Hindus hail Krishna as one of the Hindu heroes and believe that
he lived in India thousands of years back --- I wanted to put that on Wikipedia
page of Krishna - and they asked for facts -- what do you expect me to do? I
believe wiki is a good example of people over the globe trying to have
"sameness" - even here there is bias.
Second, on Jesus's wiki page I added a comment that many
Indians believe that Jesus came to learn his skills in India (and I added a BBC
report on that with weblink) and that was deleted - saying this is no research
evidence -- for Indian news on Indian culture even an obscure reference (with
no weblink) in any newspaer article in remote India is considered okay by its
editors -- incidently for Jesus they have stopped anyone from editing the page.
Anyone is free to write anything about Krshna , Ram etc -- thats free for all.
whats that to do with facts? Thats plain bias.
Umesh
Rajen & Ajanta Barua <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
Umesh:
What you are saying is right.
The West has a Eurocentric view of the world. They claim
that the basic foundation of the Western Civilization, especially on science,
is mainly based on Greek civilization. They even donot like to give proper
credit to the Indian and Chinese contribution in mathetics and other science. I
would say, the West is still in the Dark Age. However, they have a point.
Indians basically donot have any record of what they did. If you want to
counter the present Eurocentric view, the best (and only way) is to debate will
SOLID facts and figures and not with rhetoric.
If you have any specific issue, I would be glad to discus.
Rajenda
----- Original Message -----
From: umesh sharma
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2007 7:04 PM
Subject: [Assam] Indian reality versus Western mythology
Some days back a student of Indian origin born and raised
in US was surprised to learn that India had a glorious history - he hardly
believed me though.
And it did not surprise me since I have come to realize
that every civilization wants to promote itself as the best - Greek and Roman
civilization are promoted as ideals (closely followed by Egyptian one) --
Indian and Chinese ones are lesser ones.
Greek Toga costume parties are common features of Western
univs just like Indian kurta, dhoti are picking up in Indian college fashion
shows.
However, the problem is that Western historians/scholars
of non Western spheres call themselves (and each other) as the world's
foremost/only reliable experts on their chosen area of expertise - namely hows
and whys of other civilization. Most believe (I believe) that those in
non-western world/developing world are too
naive/unscientific/non-modern/non-rational to understand and appreciate the
distinction between good and bad; and right and wrong.
I believe a lay westerner is more tolerant of others'
views than these experts (whose reputation and even careers depend on promoting
what they have always held as true).
I just created a wikipedia page called Hindu Reality
-speaking against this tendency (I'm sure someone will come along and remove my
arguments).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_reality - I just
checked --someone has deleted the page itself.
Wiki seems to be about might is right -
Any comments?
Umesh
Umesh Sharma
Washington D.C.
1-202-215-4328 [Cell]
Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
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Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005
http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)
www.gse.harvard.edu/iep (where the above 2 are used )
http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
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